


The Melancholy of Jean Prouvaire

by writelights



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 07:09:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16236719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writelights/pseuds/writelights
Summary: melancholy - a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause.





	The Melancholy of Jean Prouvaire

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this on a whim with no clue where I was going with it, and here is the result. I'm actually rather proud of it, to be honest.

Jean Prouvaire picked the name Jehan because, depending on who you asked, it could have any meaning ranging from “the world” to “beautiful flower” to “it’s simply another variation of Jean.”

Jehan refused his given name because it was his father’s. His father, who drank too much and hit him until he bled and drove his mother to suicide. If there was one man in the world that Jehan really, truly hated, it was him.

He was five years old when he walked in on his mother with blood on her dress and tears streaking her face. “I lost my baby,” she had cried. “I lost my baby.” He hadn’t understood at the time, but later that day was the first time he saw his father beat his mother. Jehan had hid in the corner, eyes scrunched shut, as his father blamed her for everything wrong in the world. He said it was her fault she’d lost their baby - no, her baby. He said he knew the unborn child’s father was the florist that lived down the street, no matter how adamantly his mother denied it.

She hung herself three days later, and it was Jehan who found her. His father had been at work (he was a shipbuilder by birth) and Jehan had asked to play outside, thinking of how he’d weave together a daisy chain in hopes of lifting his mother’s spirits. But by the time he came back in with the flowers she was dangling from the kitchen door frame with a noose around her pretty little neck.

He had screamed, he had prayed (Jehan was raised Catholic, though by his mid-teens he was attending service solely for the aesthetic), he had hoped to God that this was nothing more than another bad dream. Jehan ran as soon as he heard the door to the house open. He ran up the stairs and into his mother’s room, hid under her bed and tried to muffle his already quiet sobs. When his father found him, well, that’s not something he likes to think about.

The next three years of his life were a blur of alcohol and carefully pressed roses and bruises in places a seven-year-old boy should not have bruises. His father decided it was time to send him off to boarding school two months and sixteen days after his eighth birthday. Unlike most children, he went willingly.

It was at school he read his first poem: “Tintern Abbey” by William Wordsworth. He was young and did not understand what it meant, but he liked the flow of the words, the way they sat beautifully on his tongue before rolling off in graceful bounds and leaps. He had read the poem to his only friend - a dark-haired girl by the name of Amélie, the headmaster’s youngest daughter. She had told him his voice was beautiful, that she wanted to hear him talk all the time. He had nodded and tried to ignore the awkwardness that grew in the pit of his belly.

Jehan didn’t get into the mischief that the other boys did. He preferred to be indoors, talking and laughing and reading poetry with Amélie. A year older than Jehan, she was pretty in a boyish way, her hair cut short and her dresses baggy in hopes that the older boys would leave her be.

He started writing poetry as well, which he kept in a leather journal under his bed in the room his shared with a blonde jock called Anatole. He didn’t care for Anatole, the boy who made fun of his lavender waistcoats and his copious amounts of books, but he didn’t mind him.

Jehan wrote of flowers and knit sweaters and his mother, all the things he loved and longed for. Amélie once tried to put his poem about a man who sold violets on a street corner to music, her fingers dancing idly on the piano in the front hall for hours. She eventually gave up, but she kept the paper. Jehan would later learn that she folded it up and kept it in a locket. He wouldn’t learn that she kept it until she heard of his death, when she crumpled it up and threw it in a fire and cried herself to sleep.

-

Jehan met Jacques when he was twelve, a few weeks after his father had pulled him out of school in order to learn the family trade of shipbuilding. He had been at the flower shop looking for a carnation arrangement for his mother’s grave when a boy made of sunshine offered to help him. He was beautiful, two and a half years older than Jehan and three times as good-looking. He explained that his parents owned the shop and they expected him to learn how to run it so he could take over when he got older. Jehan explained that his mother died seven years ago tomorrow and he needed flowers for her grave. “Carnations were her favorite,” he said.

“Pink, peach, or red?” Jacques asked.

“Red,” Jehan replied.

Jacques led him to the back of the shop and pressed a bouquet into his hands. “Take it,” he said. “They’re for your mother, I won’t charge you.”

“Thank you, and God bless your soul,” and he ran out of the store, tears in his eyes and some emotion he couldn’t quite name in his heart.

Jehan began hanging around the shop whenever he had some free time. His excuse was that he loved flowers and it was nice, quiet place to read, but in reality he went in hopes of catching the smallest glimpses of the boy who’d stolen his heart.

It didn’t take Jacques long to realize what was happening. He started sitting next to him as he arranged flowers, started trying to make some sort of conversation about whatever poet Jehan was reading. “Byron,” he said, “I heard he tends to bed men as much as women.”

“Indeed, ‘tis scandalous in the minds of some.” Jehan looked back down at his book in hopes of hiding the blush spreading on his face. “People say that a poet’s work reflects his life in that aspect, but I don’t think it does. It’s not immoral.”

Jacques tilted his head in thought. “Would you ever bed a man?”

Jehan didn’t answer.

-

Amélie came to visit on the day of Jehan’s fourteenth birthday. In the two years they’d been apart, she had grown more plump and womanly, with breasts and hips and long, silky hair and clothes that clung to her body. She reminded Jehan of the poem “She Walks in Beauty” by Byron, though he’d never say it out loud.

They sat on his bed and laughed and recited verses and talked of the past as if nothing had changed, but Jehan could not push down the genuine discomfort he felt with the situation. His father had suggested he spend more time with her if this meeting went well, that she would make a rich, compliant wife and mother to his children. He shuddered at the very thought.

They had been talking for nearly an hour when she put her hands on his arms and pulled him close. He froze and looked at her with wide eyes, she said he looked like a baby deer. He felt panic rising in his chest as she pressed her lips to his. They were soft, so soft, and he hated it. He pushed her away and stood up. “You should go,” he said, and so she did. He never saw her again.

Jehan hid in his room for a week after that, keeping his nose buried in a book and thinking of Jacques. His drunken father banged on his door, told him that he’d ruined everything, that he’d never get married, never find someone to love him. And for once Jehan actually thought he might be right.

Eventually, while his father was out buying more alcohol, he left and went to find Jacques. He needed to talk to him, needed to see him and touch his arm and know that he was still real. He found him behind the flower shop, cutting stems and carefully arranging roses in vases. Jacques protested lightly as Jehan all but dragged him away, but they both knew that if he didn’t want to come he didn’t have to. So he allowed Jehan to lead him to his house, up the stairs, and into his bedroom. Jehan neglected to close his door.

“Do you believe in love?” Jehan asked as he sat down on the bed. Jacques hesitated for a moment before sitting down, so Jehan gently patted the bed. This would be a conversation that required both parties to be seated.

“Love is for poets and fools, Jehan,” he answered.

Jehan smiled cheekily at the statement. “You forget that I am a poet.” He busied himself with the books on his nightstand so that maybe he wouldn’t have to look Jacques in the eyes.

“And you forget that I am a fool,” and he’s touching Jehan and Jehan’s breath is catching and it’s too much for both of them. “Look at me.” And Jehan did, because if Jacques is the sun, Jehan is Icarus.

The kiss was soft at first, gentle. Jehan didn’t pull away this time, he didn’t have to, because he wanted this. And then there’s tongue and teeth and Jehan doesn’t know what he’s doing, so he lets Jacques lead, lets him press him down on the bed, lets his touch wander in ways Jehan had only dreamed about.

He gasped loudly when Jacques’ hand fell between his legs, and Jacques began to pull away, but Jehan stopped him. “Keep touching me,” he breathed into the other boy’s mouth, and he raised his hips into the touch as Jacques started to press down ever so slightly.

Jacques came up for air and looked down at Jehan, his hand still massaging him through his pants, Jehan’s hips bucking on their own accord. “Do you remember,” he began, “do you remember when I asked if you’d ever bed a man?” Jehan nodded. “You never answered me.”

“Yes, god, yes, please, Jacques-” and then there was a sound from the doorway and Jacques quit moving. He bit his lip and looked down at Jehan, scared, his eyes wide. He still hadn’t moved his hand.

Jehan knew how this must look to his father: His only son, on his bed beneath the person he spent the majority of his time with, his waistcoat discarded and his shirt hiked up around his waist, lips kissed and bitten red, another man’s hand on his painfully obvious erection.

“I should have known,” his father said quietly. He was tipsy, yes, but not yet drunk enough to be unaware of what had just happened. “I should have fucking known!” he yelled, but he did not leave the doorway. Jacques carefully rolled off Jehan and helped him straighten his clothes while his father silently watched.

“You should go,” he said for the second time in ten days. The only difference was this time it was not in panic and anger, but sadness and fear. And then a quieter “I love you,” which he hoped his father did not see. Jacques smiled weakly and brushed past his father, leaving Jehan and the seething man alone.

“You’re a sodomite.” His father was so eerily calm that Jehan was terrified. He wanted him to scream at him, to hit him, to snap his neck for all he cared. Anything to show that his father actually cared for him. “I should have known, it’s no wonder Amélie left in tears the other day. You’re a fucking bugger.”

Jehan turned away. “Yes,” he muttered.

“Get out of my house,” his father said coldly.

And once he was gone, he didn’t come back.

-

Two days later Jehan left the small town in southern France and went to the only city he felt he could belong as a newly impoverished poet with nothing but the clothes on his back and a small leather notebook: Paris.

The streets were bright and busy and bustling and Jehan was in love with the simple beauty. He didn’t know what to do, in truth, he hadn’t truly been trained in any trade. So he wandered the streets and did odd jobs for people and wrote poetry by candlelight in his rented rooms at three in the morning. He kissed a fair share of boys, pretty boys with tousled hair, touch-starved boys fascinated by the flowers he was always careful to arrange outside his door, and rent boys looking for a franc or two in order to feed their little sisters, but he never let their hands below his waist. He would not prove his father right even if it killed him.

He had been living in Paris for nearly a year when he decided what he wanted to do with his life. Jehan had been talking to one of his clients - a middle-aged man who needed his fence painted - and he mentioned that his son was studying  literature at a local University. Long story short, in almost exactly three months’ time Jehan ended up at the University’s doorstep, packed and ready to earn a degree in English literature. This was the start of a new chapter in his life, he told himself.

Jehan’s roommate was a man by the name of Combeferre, and though not quite beautiful, he was quite a delight to be around. At seventeen, it was his second year studying art history in Paris. He had a tender smile that made Jehan’s heart melt, and he often wore a flattering dark blue waistcoat that Jehan was more than a little in love with. He often doodled in the margins of his homework, little moths and butterflies and diagrams of their little bodies. They fascinated Jehan, but he never found the courage to ask for further information on the insects.

No matter how much he loved the moths, it was Combeferre’s friends that truly captivated Jehan. Enjolras, a golden boy who spent his days studying law and fighting for the rights of all. He was so very handsome, with curly light blonde and eyes the color of a stormy sky. And Joly, a student in medicine with a nervous hands and a petite frame, always followed by Bossuet, the man who loved him as well as the woman they shared.

There were more, of course, but those were the three that immediately stood out to Jehan. Well, them and the boy that seemed to be made of garnet and the petals of freshly cut roses. Courfeyrac, his name was. Jehan couldn’t stop saying it. It flowed beautifully, the three simple syllables perfect on his tongue. Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac.

It wasn’t long before Combeferre started taking him to their “meetings” at the Café Musain, where they talked about politics and people and whatever girl Courfeyrac had brought with him that week. It was at one of those meetings he learned that Courfeyrac studied music. The thought of him playing the piano in long, graceful strokes made Jehan’s body react in ways he should have been ashamed of, but instead he simply filed the thought away for later, when he was alone.

It was his fifth meeting that he noticed a man sitting in the corner of the café watching Enjolras intently, a frown on his face and a half-empty bottle in his hand. “Who is that?” he asked Combeferre, subtly gesturing at the man.

“Oh, him?” Combeferre turned to look at him as he rested his head on the table, still gazing at Enjolras. “That’s Grantaire, a third year art student. He’s more than a little in love with Enjolras, if you can’t tell.” And oh, Jehan could tell. It was written in the way he looked at him, the way he couldn’t quite sit still when Enjolras’ gaze fell on him in the slightest. Grantaire took another swing of his drink and stood up, eying Enjolras threateningly. “Here we go again,” Combeferre muttered.

“You speak of revolution as though it runs through your veins,” he said. “Perhaps that’s the only thing that runs through your veins, my Apollo. No blood, no life, only revolution-”

“Grantaire, sit down,” Enjolras snapped, but Grantaire was not fazed.

“You say you live for it, but were you ever even alive to begin with?” He sat down and hugged his bottle to his chest. “Truly a God, my love.” The last two words came out as a whisper. Jehan pretended he couldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

Courfeyrac went over to Grantaire, took his bottle away and put an arm around his shoulders, leading him out of the café. Enjolras cleared his throat and moved on with the meeting, but Jehan wasn’t paying any attention. His thoughts were with the lovelorn drunkard and the boy made of rose petals.

-

Jehan’s studies were absolutely wonderful. He read about romance and Romantics, music and art and everything Jehan had learned to live for. When he wasn’t working or studying or out with his friends, he wrote. He wrote about what was in front of him, about Grantaire’s love and Courfeyrac’s eyes (the prettiest of blues with tiny specks of gold), of flowers and cobblestone streets and what he remembered of his mother.

During a late Friday night meeting, Enjolras sent Jehan and Courfeyrac out to purchase more wine for the men. Jehan only agreed because he liked the thought of being alone with Courfeyrac more than he cared to admit. The walk there was awkward, neither of them knew what to discuss. They bought liquor and left the store quickly, in hopes that the clerk would not notice the three bottles Courfeyrac had shoved in his bag and not paid for.

The walk home was even more uncomfortable until Jehan decided to break the silence the only way he could think of. “Would you ever kiss a boy?” he asked.

“That depends,” Courfeyrac began, “what boy would I be kissing?”

Jehan wanted more than anything to say “me, you’d be kissing me,” but he feared his voice would give out if he tried to say anything, so instead he pulled him into the nearest alleyway and roughly pressed his lips to his. Courfeyrac made a quiet noise before kissing him back, wrapping his arms around him and pulling him closer. The liquor sat abandoned on the sidewalk, forgotten.

Courfeyrac pulled away and Jehan whined, but he was also painfully aware of the other man’s hands ghosting over his ass. “Tell me what you want,” he whispered, and Jehan simply kissed him again. His lips tasted like wine and the brisk night air, his skin was soft and dusted with freckles and Jehan was in love.

“We must be heading back to the Musain,” he whispered into Courfeyrac’s mouth, “or else our friends will worry.” Jehan broke the kiss and looked him in the eyes. “Will you come home with me tonight?” After seeing the look on Courfeyrac’s face he realized how that must have sounded. “Not for, like, sex or anything. I just want to be with you.” At that his face brightened.

“Of course, little bluebird, of course.” Jehan smiled at the nickname, and then they were on their way. Later that night, back at Jehan’s flat, they kissed and cuddled a murmured each other’s names and for once in his life Jehan was really, truly happy.

-

Enjolras came up with the idea for the barricades six months later, two days before Jehan’s seventeenth birthday. They spoke in hushed voices in the back corner of the Musain, whispering of revolution and treachery and a new republic. It scared Jehan, no matter how thrilling he found the secrecy.

Speaking of secrecy, the only person who knew of him and Courfeyrac was Grantaire, who had in recent months became Jehan’s closest friend and confidant. They stayed up late and drank and laughed and talked about their loves. But when Grantaire asked why he had not yet allowed Courfeyrac to bed him, Jehan went silent.

“I don’t think Courfeyrac would hurt you,” he said quietly, “if that’s what you’re afraid of. I know you’re a virgin and you’re probably scared and-”

“Grantaire,” Jehan cut him off, “I have no doubt that Courfeyrac would treat me as if I were made of porcelain, it is for my own piece of mind that I do not allow him to touch me below the waist.”

Slowly, understanding built in Grantaire’s eyes. “You know, if you can’t prove your father wrong, why not prove him right?” And Jehan took those words to heart, because he knew Grantaire was right.

Two days later it was Jehan’s birthday and his friends (sans Enjolras; he believed birthdays were pointless, another reason to get drunk and be obnoxious) decided to have a party (despite his views, Enjolras attended anyway). They gathered at the Musain and drank themselves senseless, Courfeyrac getting a bit more touchy than he typically was in public. But then again, Grantaire was getting entirely too close to Enjolras for anyone’s tastes, so it wasn’t like they were alone.

They staggered back to Jehan’s place a few hours later, drunk and giggling and touching each other far too intimately for public spaces. Sodomy may have been legal, but that didn’t mean it was accepted. And then they were inside and Courfeyrac was kissing him and pressing him against the wall and he could feel his prick growing hard, pressing against Courfeyrac’s hip, the other man’s smirk as he reached down to palm him through his pants.

“You want this,” he said, and though it was worded as a statement, Jehan knew it was a question. He nodded vigorously and watched as Courfeyrac fell to his knees and began unbuttoning his trousers. His breath caught and he tangled his hands in that beautiful chestnut brown hair.

God, he was proving his father so right, and it felt too wonderful for him to care.

-

A month later, standing atop the barricade, a gun to his head, he thought only of Courfeyrac. He thought of Courfeyrac as he yelled, “Vive la France! Long live France! Long live the future!” He thought of Courfeyrac as he heard the shot and took his last breath and fell to the ground, and he could have sworn he heard him yell, but he didn’t live long enough to find out.


End file.
